We are finally finished mixes for our new album! Below is a pic of Lewis mixing the album at the Black Iris Studios in Echo Park. Lewis likes to pretend he is in an igloo when he mixes records. Mastering is happening on May 31st!

In other news, we are happy to announce that Long Beach guitar genie Matt Fry of The Soft Hands is now an official member of Happy Hollows! Matt has been jamming with us occasionally since waaaaay back in the day. We invited him to come into practice with us on a more regular basis when we started writing this record last year and since then he has really inspired us with his great guitar work and kept us laughing with his funny stories about the many dates he goes on. So please welcome Matt to the band! Here is a picture of him from a show he played with us last year:

Sarah is deep into tracking vocals and, as of today, singing for 10-12 songs is complete. She is able to get through about two songs a day and we take a break every couple of days to let her voice rest. When she's in the vocal booth Sarah has a big box of supplies including raw honey, licorice tea, bark syrup, a magical rose quartz crystal, water, and a little whiskey. Check it out:

We are hoping to finish vocals and overdubs this week and finish up mixes by the end of the month!

We're very happy to say that phase one of album two is complete. Last week we spent five days at Infrasonic Studios in Alhambra, CA recording drums, bass, and synths for the record. We even got main guitars down for a bunch of the tracks, which was a bonus. Here are some pics:

Beginning a record is always a daunting experience. You are never really sure what is going to happen. There is always the remote possibility that you'll hit the first chord of the first song and everyone involved in the process will simultaneously wish they were somewhere else. Fortunately, that didn't happen in this case. The tracking process was mostly painless and we finished up everything we were aiming to do.

Up next are guitar and synth overdubs, which should take a week or two. Then we move on to vocals. Stay tuned.

Below, check out another clip of a new song we played live at a show in November 2011.

We're very excited to announce Happy Hollows are beginning recording for our second album this week. The album will be produced by Lewis Pesacov (Fools Gold, Best Coast).

For most of the past year we've been locked away in our rehearsal space working on songs. As many of you know, our former drummer and good friend Chris left the band in early 2011 for family reasons, so we were without live beats for a while. During that time Sarah and I spent a lot of time writing songs to synth loops and electronic drums composed on random pieces of gear we had lying around (see below).

Sarah would often get on drums and sing and play beats to loops as well. For much of the time our good friend Matt Fry of Long Beach's The Soft Hands also came up to L.A. to write and rehearse with us. The writing process was very different from what we'd done in the past but was really enjoyable. Coming up with guitar/drum/bass parts designed around synth loops really challenged us to play in different ways and come up with ideas that might never have emerged had we just been writing songs in the more traditional drums/bass/guitar set-up we had used in the past.

In June 2011 we finally found our new drummer, Richy, and have been refining and writing more songs over the past 6 months. See below for a little preview of one of the songs!

We'll be updating this blog pretty regularly with news/pics/video on the recordings, so check back soon.